The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (15 page)

Anna found her voice. “I know only that I am being forcibly detained. What do you want?”

“Information, doctor. What government do you represent?”

“None.”

The man fairly purred. “Don’t you realize, doctor, that as soon as you cease to answer responsively, I shall kill you?”

Anna van Tuyl looked from the man to the woman. She thought of circling hawks, and felt the intimations of terror. What could she have done to attract such wrathful attention? She didn’t
know. But then,
they
couldn’t be sure about
her
, either. This man didn’t want to kill her until he found out more. And by that time surely he’d see that it was all a
mistake.

She said: “Either I am a psychiatrist attending a special case, or I am not. I am in no position to prove the positive. Yet, by syllogistic law, you must accept it as a possibility until
you prove the negative. Therefore, until you have given me an opportunity to explain or disprove any evidence to the contrary, you can never be certain in your own mind that I am other than what I
claim to be.”

The man smiled, almost genially. “Well put, doctor. I hope they’ve been paying you what you are worth.” He bent forward suddenly. “Why are you trying to make Ruy Jacques
fall in love with you?”

She stared back with widening eyes. “What did you say?”

“Why are you trying to make Ruy Jacques fall in love with you?”

She could meet his eyes squarely enough, but her voice was now very faint: “I didn’t understand you at first. You said . . . that I’m trying to make him fall in love with
me.” She pondered this for a long wondering moment, as though the idea were utterly new. “And I guess . . . it’s true.”

The man looked blank, then smiled with sudden appreciation. “You
are
clever. Certainly, you’re the first to try
that
line. Though I don’t know what you expect to
gain with your false candour.”

“False? Didn’t you mean it yourself? No, I see you didn’t. But Mrs. Jacques does. And she hates me for it. But I’m just part of the bigger hate she keeps for
him
.
Even her Sciomnia equation is just part of that hate. She isn’t working on a biophysical weapon just because she’s a patriot, but more to spite him, to show him that her science is
superior to – ”

Martha Jacques’ hand lashed viciously across the little table and struck Anna in the mouth.

The man merely murmured: “Please control yourself a bit longer, Mrs. Jacques. Interruptions from outside would be most inconvenient at this point.” His humorless eyes returned to
Anna. “One evening a week ago, when Mr. Jacques was under your care at the clinic, you left stylus and paper with him.”

Anna nodded. “I wanted him to attempt automatic writing.”

“What is ‘automatic writing’?”

“Simply writing done while the conscious mind is absorbed in a completely extraneous activity, such as music. Mr. Jacques was to focus his attention on certain music composed by me while
holding stylus and paper in his lap. If his recent inability to read and write was caused by some psychic block, it was quite possible that his subconscious mind might bypass the block, and he
would write – just as one ‘doodles’ unconsciously when talking over the visor.”

He thrust a sheet of paper at her. “Can you identify this?”

What was he driving at? She examined the sheet hesitantly. “It’s just a blank sheet from my private monogrammed stationery. Where did you get it?”

“From the pad you left with Mr. Jacques.”

“So?”

“We also found another sheet from the same pad under Mr. Jacques’ bed. It had some interesting writing on it.”

“But Mr. Jacques personally reported nil results.”

“He was probably right.”

“But you said he wrote something?” she insisted; momentarily her personal danger faded before her professional interest.

“I didn’t say
he
wrote anything.”

“Wasn’t it written with that same stylus?”

“It was. But I don’t think he wrote it. It wasn’t in his handwriting.”

“That’s often the case in automatic writing. The script is modified according to the personality of the dissociated subconscious unit. The alteration is sometimes so great as to be
unrecognizable as the m of the subject.”

He peered at her keenly. “This script was perfectly recognizable, Dr. van Tuyl. I’m afraid you’ve made a grave blunder. Now, shall I tell you in
whose
handwriting?”

She listened to her own whisper: “Mine?”

“Yes.”

“What does it say?”

“You know very well.”

“But I don’t.” Her underclothing was sticking to her body with a damp clammy feeling. “At least you ought to give me a chance to explain it. May I see it?”

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then reached into his pocket sheaf. “Here’s an electrostat. The paper, texture, ink, everything, is a perfect copy of your
original.”

She studied the sheet with a puzzled frown. There were a few lines of scribblings in purple. But it
wasn’t
in her handwriting. In fact, it wasn’t even handwriting – just
a mass of illegible scrawls!

Anna felt a thrill of fear. She stammered: “What are you trying to do?”

“You don’t deny you wrote it?”

“Of course I deny it.” She could no longer control the quaver in her voice. Her lips were leaden masses, her tongue a stone slab. “It’s – unrecognizable . .
.”

The Cork floated with sinister patience. “In the upper left hand corner is your monogram: ‘A. vT.’, the same as on the first sheet. You will admit that, at least?”

For the first time, Anna really examined the presumed trio of initials enclosed in the familiar ellipse. The ellipse was there. But the print within it was – gibberish. She seized again at
the first sheet – the blank one. The feel of the paper, even the smell, stamped it as genuine. It had been hers. But the monogram! “Oh no!” she whispered.

Her panic-stricken eyes flailed about the room. The calendar . . . same picture of the same cow
. . . but the rest
. . . ! A stack of books in the corner . . . titled in gold leaf . . .
gathering dust for months . . . the label on the roll of patching tape on the table . . . even the watch on her wrist.

Gibberish. She could no longer read. She had forgotten how. Her ironic gods had chosen this critical moment to blind her with their brilliant bounty.

Then take it! And play for time!

She wet trembling lips. “I’m unable to read. My reading glasses are in my bag, outside.” She returned the script. “If
you’d
read it, I might recognize the
contents.”

The man said: “I thought you might try this, just to get my eyes off you. If you don’t mind, I’ll quote from memory:

“‘ – what a queer climax for The Dream! Yet, inevitable. Art versus Science decrees that one of us must destroy the Sciomniac weapon; but that could wait until we become more
numerous. So, what I do is for him alone, and his future depends on appreciating it. Thus, Science bows to Art, but even Art isn’t all. The Student must know the one greater thing when he
sees The Nightingale dead, for only then will he recognize . . .’”

He paused.

“Is that all?” asked Anna.

“That’s all.”

“Nothing about a . . . rose?”

“No. What is ‘rose’ a code word for?”

Death? mused Anna. Was the rose a cryptolalic synonym for the grave? She closed her eyes and shivered. Were those really
her
thought, impressed into the mind and wrist of Ruy Jacques from
some grandstand seat at her own ballet three weeks hence? But after all, why was it so impossible? Coleridge claimed
Kublai Khan
had been dictated to him through automatic writing. And that
English mystic, William Blake, freely acknowledged being the frequent amanuensis for an unseen personality. And there were numerous other cases. So, from some unseen time and place, the mind of
Anna van Tuyl had been attuned to that of Ruy Jacques, and his mind had momentarily forgotten that both of them could no longer write, and had recorded a strange reverie.

It was then that she noticed the – whispers.

No – not whispers – not exactly. More like rippling vibrations, mingling, rising, falling. Her heart beats quickened when she realized that their eerie pattern was soundless. It was
as though something in her mind was suddenly vibrating
en rapport
with a subetheric world. Messages were beating at her for which she had no tongue or ear; they were beyond sound –
beyond knowledge, and they swarmed dizzily around her from all directions. From the ring she wore. From the bronze buttons of her jacket. From the vertical steam piping in the corner. From the
metal reflector of the ceiling light.

And the strongest and most meaningful of all showered steadily from the invisible weapon. The Cork grasped in his coat pocket. Just as surely as though she had seen it done, she knew that the
weapon had killed in the past. And not just once. She found herself attempting to unravel those thought residues of death – once – twice – three times . . . beyond which they
faded away into steady, indecipherable time-muted violence.

And now that gun began to scream: “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

She passed her palm over her forehead. Her whole face was cold and wet. She swallowed noisily.

Ruy Jacques sat before the metal illuminator near his easel, apparently absorbed in the profound contemplation of his goatish features, and oblivious to the mounting gaiety
about him. In reality he was almost completely lost in a soundless, sardonic glee over the triangular death-struggle that was nearing its climax beyond the inner wall of his studio, and which was
magnified in his remarkable mind to an incredible degree by the paraboloid mirror of the illuminator.

Bell’s low urgent voice began hacking at him again. “Her blood will be on your head. All you need to do is to go in there. Your wife wouldn’t permit any shooting with you
around.”

The artist twitched his misshapen shoulders irritably. “
Maybe
. But why should I risk my skin for a silly little nightingale?”

“Can it be that your growth beyond
sapiens
has served simply to sharpen your objectivity, to accentuate your inherent egregious want to identity with even the best of your fellow
creatures? Is the indifference that has driven Martha nearly insane in a bare decade now too ingrained to respond to the first known female of your own unique breed?” Bell sighed heavily.
“You don’t have to answer. The very senselessness of her impending murder amuses you. Your nightingale is about to be impaled on her thorn – for nothing – as always. Your
sole regret at the moment is that you can’t twit her with the assurance that you will study her corpse diligently to find there the rose you seek.”

“Such unfeeling heartlessness,” said Jacques in regretful agreement, “is only to be expected in one of Martha’s blunderings. I mean The Cork, of course. Doesn’t he
realize that Anna hasn’t finished the score of her ballet? Evidently has no musical sense at all. I’ll bet he was even turned down for the policemen’s charity quarter.
You’re right, as usual, doc. We must punish such philistinism.” He tugged at his chin, then rose from the folding stool.

“What are you going to do?” demanded the other sharply.

The artist weaved toward the phono cabinet. “Play a certain selection from Tchaikovsky’s
Sixth
. If Anna’s half the girl you think, she and Peter Ilyitch will soon have
Mart eating out of their hands.”

Bell watching him in anxious, yet half-trusting frustration as the other selected a spool from his library of electronic recordings and inserted it into the playback sprocket. In mounting
mystification, he saw Jacques turn up the volume control as far as it would go.

Murder
, a one-act play directed by Mrs. Jacques, thought Anna. With sound effects by Mr. Jacques. But the facts didn’t fit. It was unthinkable that Ruy would do
anything to accommodate his wife. If anything, he would try to thwart Martha. But what was his purpose in starting off in the finale of the first movement of the
Sixth
? Was there some
message there that he was trying to get across to her?

There was. She had it. She was going to live. If –

“In a moment,” she told The Cork in a tight voice, “you are going to snap off the safety catch of your pistol, revise slightly your estimated line of fire, and squeeze the
trigger. Ordinarily you could accomplish all three acts in almost instantaneous sequence. At the present moment, if I tried to turn the table over on you, you could put a bullet in my head before I
could get well started. But in another sixty seconds you will no longer have that advantage, because your motor nervous system will be laboring under the superimposed pattern of the extraordinary
Second Movement of the symphony that we now hear from the studio.”

The Cork started to smile, then he frowned faintly. “What do you mean?”

“All motor acts are carried out in simple rhythmic patterns. We walk in the two-four time of the march. We waltz, use a pickaxe, and manually grasp or replace objects in three-four
rhythm.”

“This nonsense is purely a play for time,” interjected Martha Jacques. “Kill her.”

“It is a fact,” continued Anna hurriedly. (Would that Second Movement never begin?) “A decade ago, when there were still a few factories using hand-assembly methods, the
workmen speeded their work by breaking down the task into these same elemental rhythms, aided by appropriate music.” (There! It was beginning! The immortal genius of that suicidal Russian was
reaching across a century to save her!) “It so happens that the music you are hearing
now
is the Second Movement that I mentioned, and it’s neither two-four nor three-four but
five-
four, an oriental rhythm that gives difficulty even to skilled occidental musicians and dancers. Subconsciously you are going to try to break it down into the only rhythms to which your
motor nervous system is attuned. But you can’t. Nor can
any
occidental, even a professional dancer, unless he has had special training” – her voice wobbled slightly –
“in Delcrozian eurhythmics.”